from office," and Article 53(1) of the Constitutional Court Act provides that the "Constitutional Court shall issue a decision removing the public official from office when there is a valid ground for the petition for impeachment adjudication." Here, the issue is how to interpret the phrase of "when there is a valid ground for the petition for impeachment adjudication." One possible literal interpretation is that Article 53(1) of the Constitutional Court Act provides that the Constitutional Court shall automatically issue a decision removing the public official from office as long as there is any valid ground for impeachment set forth in Article 65(1) of the Constitution. However, under such interpretation, the Constitutional Court is bound to order removal from public office upon finding any act of the respondent in violation of law without regard to the gravity of illegality. Should the respondent be removed from his office for any and all miscellaneous violations of law committed in the course of performing his official duties, this would be against the principle of proportionality that requests constitutional punishment that corresponds to the responsibility given to the respondent. Therefore, the existence of the 'valid ground for the petition for impeachment adjudication' in Article 53(1) of the Constitutional Court Act means the existence of a 'grave' violation of law sufficient to justify removal of a public official from his or her office and not merely any violation of law. B. Standard to be adopted in judging the 'gravity of violations' (1) The question of whether there was a 'grave violation of law' or whether the 'removal is justifiable' cannot be conceived by itself. Thus, whether or not to remove a public official from office should be determined by balancing the 'gravity of the violation of law' by the public official against the 'impact of the decision to remove.' As the essential nature of the impeachment adjudication process lies in the protection and the preservation of the Constitution, the 'gravity of the violation of law' means the 'gravity in terms of the protection of the constitutional order.' Therefore, the existence of a valid ground for the petition for impeachment adjudication, that is, the removal from office, should be determined by balancing the 'degree of the negative impact on or the harm to the constitutional order caused by the violation of law' and the 'effect to be caused by the removal of the respondent from office.' (2) The President is in an extremely significant status as the head of the state and the chief of the executive branch (Article 66 - 195 -